Journey to Stormreach
Resuming the Journey With the party healed up and back in good adventuring condition, we set out back on the road to Stormreach. After a short journey, we approached a house. We were told not to touch anything no matter what. The house was well maintained, and there was a feast set out on the table... the smell tempting the party. Strangely there was nobody there at all. I vaguely recall some stuff floating or moving without reason, and I suspected it was a house maintained by some kind of spirit. On the roof of the house was a godstone that we used to continue the journey. Borduch's March Upon landing on the other side of godstone, we found outself in Borduch's March. Zaran got us into a good fighting formation and told us to be ready, to move quickly, and to stay quiet. Despite this, we did get spotted by a Borduchai scouting patrol unit. Zaran bought us time and told us to run. He caught up with us, enthusiatically yelling and mocking the Borduchai... who obviously recognized Zaran and disliked that his escort service ran through their territory. We went as fast as we could into the next portal, and somehow Barak Kruthik, the leader of the Borduchai unit, was taken prisoner by us while he was chasing Zaran down. He followed us through the portal, and agreed to work with us. He felt shame that he failed his mission and got taken captive, so he didn't want to return to his people just yet. Into The Xen'Drik Barak Kruthik (black speach for "eats kruthik for breakfast") proved to be a powerful ally. We found ourselves in a thick jungle, which was very strangely warm for how far north we were. As we traversed the raised stone pathway in front of us, we had to deal with a mutated giant and "flying pigs" who were trying to headbutt us off the pathway and into the marsh. Barak Kruthik did a flashy attack where he did a flip and killed the giant, after we weakened it with arrows. Securis was blown off the pathway and into the marsh by a "flying pig". If it wasn't for Securis's birthday DRMs, he would've snapped his neck and died on landing. A few of us went out and safely retrieved him, since he was still knocked unconcious anyway. It took like 4 of us. (I think one of us spotted an item of interest in the marsh and retrieved it???). We were unable to really damage the "flying pigs", though we tried with missile weapons. Zaran lead us up to a door in the cliff-side, and whispered a password. Inside the Hisstht recognized him and allowed our party in. We got the injured set up for recovery near a deposit of dragonshards. Durus took one that had a rune inscribed on it. Exploring the cavern revealed a chamber with lava. Velephia (?) fell in the lava... the Hisstht chieften led Velephia to the life forge, and helped heal her leg by life-forging some skin for her... He also included an implant that let her speak with the Hisstht (and also lizards?). Aka continued to develop her reputation for sitting back and letting other party members take the risks. First Histht Tree Stop William claims that this is where we encountered the ants that road on each others backs. Neither of us could recall anything else important happening. As I understand, we pretty much just rested and left the area when we could afterwards. The Septuron Soon enough, the Hisstht chief allowed us to borrow some life-forged fliers (Note that they either were "flying pigs" or looked similar. Note that the "flying pigs" looked more like the body of a darker colored boar with very large bat-like wings. They were built for high speed ramming collisions, so their heads were built for headbutts.) We arrived at our first stop, which was a very tall hill (almost like a tower in the landscape). There was an archeologer sage who was excavating in the area. We were reminded by Zaran that in the Xen'Drink, there isn't really law at all and you only own what you can defend. Needing to let the fliers rest, the party decided to go poking about the excavation sites. The sage wanted Durus and Rognus to help him finish building siege weaponry, since he was unable to figure out how to get around some of the exact details and finishing touches. Durus agreed - only because the weapons would be finished just as the party was leaving. The party uncovered several findings and experienced visions while uncovering them. details on these when I find the document we recorded that information in. Ultimately, we decided to keep our findings for ourselves instead of giving anything to the sage. We decided to leave early in the morning before we said we would. The angry sage tried to get his siege weapons to attack us as we flew away, but hitting flying targets with siege weaponry was practically impossible. Exiting the Jungle Our fliers next landed in an amazingly tall tree. Hinode's fear of height kicked in, and he was hugging the center as best he could while shaking (NPC'd PC action). This was the site of another hisstht base. Shaara's stone flared up and reacted oddly with some of the Sileouni machinery downstairs. We never figured out the purposed of the Sileouni machinery, but we got Shaara's stone to calm down. Zaran informed us that we would be walking from here to Stormreach. Our first encounter was a set of giant ants (may not have happened here). Rognus wondered why the smaller ants weren't riding the larger ones across the river, and the DM thanked Rognus for the suggestion... which did put the party in a more difficult position (but not by much). This moment was immortalized in our minds. The next encounter we came upon was a group of Fae-Arie. They were killing animals for sport and in cruel ways. (Either Velephia or Ceridwyn) couldn't take it, and abandoned our plan to just sit there and wait for them to pass by. She lept up and critically struck the Fae in the kidney, paralyzing it and killing it. We engaged the Fae in response and forced them to teleport out. If memory serves correct, the rest of our journey out of the jungle was unimpeded. We were now at the gates of Stormreach.